I’ve not pressed flowers since I was child, when I did so with my gran using flowers from her farm garden. So it was a bit of a trip down memory lane creating the herbariums – embroidered and floral – for this pattern.

Embroidery stitches are especially well suited to nature, with many that effortlessly mimic flowers, leaves and stems. And so Herbarium came together quite organically, starting with the fishbone leaves that are so pleasurable to stitch. Fly stitch leaves are another favourite and so there are a few of those in there, and then some textural stitches to add dimension.

Herbariums are typically framed and so this one went into a hoop to create some hoop art. It’s an uncomplicated pattern with a feeling of lightness and ease of stitching about it, which you’ll easily finish in a day or two.

Herbarium is available as an instant download, PDF pattern from my Etsy shop.

Note: Craftsy is making changes and as a result, I’m not able to upload any new patterns to my Craftsy shop for now.

My second festive design for this year uses patterning to create a fresh, almost minimalist Christmas embroidery pattern and includes two printable embroidered greeting cards.

The design is easy to embroider, it uses a number of different embroidery stitches arranged to create repeat patterns. And you can easily change the thread colours to embroider the trees in blues, greys, different shades of green… whatever colours you fancy.

The pattern includes two printable Christmas cards, with step-by-step photo instructions on how to embroider them. Stitching on paper is quick and fun, and can be done with kids as a holiday activity. Try out different threads and personalise your cards with additional embellishments. You can adjust the size of the cards as well, to suit your needs.

Yule Trees is available as an instant download, PDF pattern from my Etsy and Craftsy shops.

This is the sixth and final part of a six-part series on the basics of creative surface embroidery, for beginners and those looking to refresh their hand embroidery skills and knowledge.

Your embroidery is done, now what? If you had a finished product in mind, you’ll need to prep your embroidery for the next phase of that project, whether it’s sewing, framing or some other creative idea. If not, you might want to just leave it in the hoop as hoop art. Either way, you’ll want a piece of smooth embroidered fabric to work with.

And Tanja Berlin of Berlin Embroidery Designs has a detailed tutorial on how to mount your embroidery for framing in a store-bought frame, with a PDF download of the tutorial for you to print and keep.

How to make hoop art

Another popular way to display finished work is to frame your embroidery in the hoop. Back it with a piece of felt for a professional finish. Jessica from Cutesy Crafts shows you how:

A popular item to embroider is tea towels, but the trick is knowing how to start and end your threads neatly as the back of your work will be visible. The same goes for fabric napkins. Sarah Homfray shows you how to start and end threads from the front of your fabric, keeping the visible back of your tea towel or napkin neat and tidy:

There’s some good advice on how to care for your embroidery – when washing and ironing the finished work, as well as while stitching – in Embroidery Tips, Tricks & Techniques, including an extreme solution if your thread colour runs into your fabric and you just can’t get it out!

It’s annual sale time… everything in my Etsy shop is less 25% for four days from Black Friday on 23 November to Cyber Monday on 26 November.

Each item will be shown at the sale price, so you just shop as usual. This includes pattern and ebook bundles, so you're effectively getting 25% off already reduced bundle prices as well.

The sale runs for four days to give all of you around the world plenty of time to browse and shop, whatever your time zone. It's a good way to stock up on patterns for some holiday stitching or get any items you may have had your eye on at a lower price.

This is part five of a six-part series on the basics of creative surface embroidery, for beginners and those looking to refresh their hand embroidery skills and knowledge.

There are hundreds of different embroidery stitches, many of which are perfect for this style of creative surface embroidery. Here are five stitches I use all the time:

Stem stitch

Stem stitch gives a smooth, neat line of stitching and works well on straight and curved lines. It’s my go-to stitch for outlines.

Mary Corbet from NeedlenThread.com shows you how to do stem stitch, including around corners:

Back stitch

Back stitch is another good embroidery stitch for outlines. It takes a bit on concentration to get your individual stitch lengths even, but is a good stitch to know as it can be used on straight or curved lines and is easy to work around corners or when embroidering sharp points.

Lauren Holton of Lark Rising Embroidery goes through the ins and outs of back stitch:

French knots

French knots are probably the most well-known embroidery knots. Ideally, you want all your knots to be a similar size and shape.

Jessica of Cutesy Crafts has some tips for doing French knots (use a milliner needle):

Satin stitch

Satin stitch is an easy way to fill areas of an embroidery design. It takes a bit of practice, but looks good and is a nice way to introduce solid blocks of colour into your embroidery.

Jenn Sturiale of Stitcharama.com shows you how to do satin stitch in 30 seconds:

Chain stitch

Good for lines and outlines, chain stitch gives a thicker row of stitching than stem or back stitch. It resembles the links of a chain, hence the name.

Sarah Homfray has some good advice on stitch tension when doing chain stitch:

There are so many great surface embroidery stitches out there. Master the basics and learn some of the more unusual or adapted stitches with 120 Embroidery Stitches, an ebook of written and illustrated, step-by-step instructions for all the stitches used in my books, kits and patterns. The convenient PDF format means you can save it to your phone or tablet for stitching on the go, or print it out and bind it into a paper reference book.